This week National Journal’sEnergy Experts Blog poses the question: “What’s holding back energy & climate policy.” There is no momentum building for the kind of comprehensive energy legislation Congress enacted in 2005 and 2007.> Read the analysis

President Obama’s attempt to circumvent the Senate by unilaterally appointing Ohio politician Richard Cordray to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau may have been premised on his expectation that he would get away with it. If so, he seems to have miscalculated, because the other two branches of government are providing him with a Sesame Street demonstration of the concept of “checks and balances.” >Read more

The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has ruled that Germany violated international law by not prosecuting a former German legislator for an interview with a cultural journal in which he said negative things about immigration and the alleged dependence on welfare of Turkish immigrants to his country. That ruling illustrates that international-law norms can be inimical to American civil-liberties such as freedom of speech, making it inappropriate for U.S. courts to enforce such foreign norms.> Read more